Actually, Max is 5 years old, but the title sounded good 
We have known for quite some time that Max is a different kind of kid. He has been doing and saying things that amaze us since he started moving around on his own. So, it was an easy descision to decide to take him on a backpacking trip into the wilderness. We left Casper late on Friday night after the first week of school (for teachers). We took a Ranger ride from the truck to the wilderness trail head and started off on our adventure. It was late in the evening when we began the hike, so we made camp quite a bit lower than normal. The next morning we hiked for a couple hours and made a base camp and then headed for Angeline which is a lake that sits just above timberline. Max did an amazing job carrying his pack and keeping up (for the most part). He was able to catch a fish for our breakfast, drink straight from a mountain stream and start our campfire. GOOD JOB, MAX!!
Posts Tagged backpacking
Timberline with a toddler
Sep 11
Popo Agie
Jul 23
Snow, snow and more snow. Much more snow than we have ever seen before. The mosquitos were pretty numerous too, but good ol’ deet does the trick. If anyone ever tries to sell you some other product to keep mosquitos away, DON’T FALL FOR IT. We decided to try three different alternatives to deet this trip; 1. citronella bracelette, 2. skin patch, 3. buzz off bandanas. None of them even came close to keeping the bugs away. We even had all three going at the same time and still the only thing that worked was the deet.
We stayed the first night at Tomohawk lake and caught severl brook trout for breakfast before heading for Thumb Lake a several hundred feet above.
As far as the fishing, it was more like being in the mountains in June, the fishing was somewhat slow. On the upside, Michelle hooked her first ever golden trout; although it got off just before landing it 
It is still always good to get the backpacks on and live in the wilderness for a few days! On the way back to the trail head, we ran into some friends of ours from Casper, Ken and Amber Christianson.
Cloud Peak Wilderness
Aug 1
This backpacking trip was a 9 mile trek from the truck to our base camp. We entered the wilderness Friday at 1pm. Besides Scout, Gordon (79 1/2) and Chad joined us. We were fortunate to have cool cloudy weather on the way in to this area. We hiked for 2 1/2 hours from the Ranger and made camp at 10,000 feet. On the way to camp we saw elk tracks all along the trail and woke both mornings to cow calls and young bulls. Saturday morning we were able to watch the large herd from a hill near camp. We watched elk and ate coffee and doughnuts before climbing another 525 feet to the lake we planned on fishing for the day. After arriving at the the lake we boulder hopped for another 1/4 of a mile to our favorite fishing spot. The fishing was good as usual on the lake with all the cutthroats between 17″ and 20″ with most being seen before casting to. We fished till mid afternoon and then headed back down to camp and dinner. The next morning we had bacon and fresh trout for breakfast while listening to elk mewing and even bugling in the background. The hike out was uneventful except for some picking of unbelievably flavored strawberries and a 20 degree temperature difference by the time we got off the mountains. Watch the video!
What a great trip of backpacking and fishing. We hiked 12 miles in four days and fished 4 different lakes. Two of the lakes we fished had small but feisty brookies, one lake had big cutthroats cruising and feeding all hours of the day and the last lake had nonexistent golden trout that had already moved deep. Scout made this trip with us for his first time carrying his own backpack. He did a great job of staying with us over big boulders and up steep slopes never slowing down. This year the mosquitos followed us up the mountain further then usual not stopping until we reached nearly 11,000 feet. We used a therma-cell mosquito repeller around camp but it had a hard time working at our main camp at 10,500 feet with such little oxygen in the air. The last afternoon and evening that we were camping we were swallowed up by the clouds and had three different thunderstorms move through with lots of rain/hail, wind and thunder. It was a neat experience making one remember how tiny we are on this planet. We found out when we got home this was part of the same storm that killed a climber and stranded 9 other climbers in the Tetons. Thank you, God for keeping us safe!!!
Popo Agie Wilderness
Jul 18
The first pack trip of the season! We picked up our good friend Chad at noon after Michelle was finished with 
summer school and drove toward Lander. We made it to the Fiddler’s Lake parking lot by 4pm, strapped on our backpacks and headed into the wilderness. It was a 2 hour hike to go nearly 4 miles to our base camp at Tomahawk. The plan was to take day packs the next morning to Fawn and Thumb Lakes for Brookies, Cuts and Goldens.
We made camp and Erik and Chad fished Tomahawk while Michelle made a hearty dinner of Dinty Moore and tortillas.
Halfway through dinner Chad became very ill. It turned out he had altitude sickness. We gave it until morning, but to no avail. We needed to get out of there while he still had the strength to hike out on his own. We left camp by 10:30 Saturday morning and safely made it to the truck.
We’ll be back, Popo Agie……..